Actually it did. How many times have you seen a datamined mount or pet model here and gone "Oh that looks too good, must be for the store". Not to mention people had been asking for a bat mount for ages, and they finally get one, but oh wait you have to pay extra, sorry!

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I remember when this game came out, one of the devs said something like "We will never charge you money outside of your subscription for any content", back when EQ and Asian games were doing so and they were trying to lord over people that they were better than that. It was what made a lot of people pick WoW over other games.

Then the sparkle pony came, and everyone defended them despite this. Then the pets. And now this. Where does the line end? Have people just forgotten what other games were like who went down this route? Why does Blizzard get a free pass when a lot of people have seen how this kind of road has turned out in other games? And yes, they started with "just cosmetics", too. Many of them never even went down the route of XP boosts and such, it was just frustrating that you paid a monthly fee and then had to pay another fee on top of that for cool items that your monthly fee should have covered. That was Blizzard's old philosophy, and that is why I put my trust and faith into them for all these years. I bit my tongue with pets and mounts, but sorry, gear (even just cosmetics, yes) is just three strikes and I'm out.

Cancelled sub a month ago (for the first time ever) with all intentions on returning for 5.4.

After playing since day 1, as much as I hate to say it, I think this might be the end of the road.

This game has moved so far away from what it used to be. Best of luck to everyone who continues to play. Hope that they draw a line with their cash stops pretty soon.

Lol.

Actually, it is YOU that has moved 'so far away from what [it] used to be'. If you've been playing for 9 years what do you expect? It's natural you feel less inclined to play the game, you are NINE years older since you first saw Vanilla --so please don't insinuate that the 'cash shop' is the end of the road for you. All games have a natural growth decay, as do economies and cities. The features to population ratio has to increase to both retain new and old customers; the Blizzard Store is a natural evolution in the growth of WoW and one that embraces what most players would expect.

It is only the hard nosed, long in the tooth naysayers (not you personally) that complain about such commodities being added to a well updated game -both within the game and without.

For all of the 'hardcore' or 'purists' I say this: these additions to the Store affect you not.

As for 'implications' (sic) that so many people are trolling for, I wouldn't waste my time arguing with such puerile nonsense!

It's about time WoW gamers grew up and stick to their own niches if they can't embrace others' -if you don't like the 'Store then good for you, enjoy your game, your play experience hasn't changed one bit for it!!

Without going too much into the whole cosmetics/pay2win debate raging here..

They need to be able to monetize the game in some way in order to survive and keep development going, we've been paying the same static subscription price for almost 10 years now.
With yearly inflation somewhere around 2.5-3% that $15 bucks 10 years ago was worth quite a bit more than it is today, so I'd guess they're under a lot of pressure to actually find working business model.

Bumping up the sub price would look really bad PR-wise and as the game is inevitably getting older and losing more players ... what would be the realistic alternative to covering the losses from static subscription pricing if not the cash shop items?

As much as I dislike the "cheap" feel of cash shops (especially if they're in-game/in-your-face), I think it's a fairly good interim solution for WoW.

I'm sure the Blizzard management has some sort of long-term strategy objectives in place to take the next steps (perhaps a possible free2play model) for when the next low-water performance indicator is reached (perhaps a sort of a free2play model?) - will be interesting to see what it is when we get there.

Moving more and more things to the cash shop (with different pricing points) gives them flexibility they need at the moment and it's a solid (and quite expected) business move - a bit surprised it took them this long - losing profits on static subs can't have been easy for them.

Gamewise.. I'm not so sure - but as long as it's not pure play2win shop and they don't implement too many reminder pop-ups while I'm running a raid, I'm resonably OK with it

Without going too much into the whole cosmetics/pay2win debate raging here..

They need to be able to monetize the game in some way in order to survive and keep development going, we've been paying the same static subscription price for almost 10 years now.
With yearly inflation somewhere around 2.5-3% that $15 bucks 10 years ago was worth quite a bit more than it is today, so I'd guess they're under a lot of pressure to actually find working business model.

They dont cause, servers get cheaper and more economic on the power consumed and AC needed, Bandwidth got pretty inexpensive aswell.

I'd think main part of their cost drivers would be staff salaries, not hardware/bandwidth/machinery.

More BS, ppl are happy to get payed the same they were back in 2007 becuase of the economic crisis, nevertheless all the name changes/server xfers etc give them plenty of profit aswell not to mention the already established mount and pet shop

Without going too much into the whole cosmetics/pay2win debate raging here..

They need to be able to monetize the game in some way in order to survive and keep development going, we've been paying the same static subscription price for almost 10 years now.
With yearly inflation somewhere around 2.5-3% that $15 bucks 10 years ago was worth quite a bit more than it is today, so I'd guess they're under a lot of pressure to actually find working business model.

Bumping up the sub price would look really bad PR-wise and as the game is inevitably getting older and losing more players ... what would be the realistic alternative to covering the losses from static subscription pricing if not the cash shop items?

As much as I dislike the "cheap" feel of cash shops (especially if they're in-game/in-your-face), I think it's a fairly good interim solution for WoW.

I'm sure the Blizzard management has some sort of long-term strategy objectives in place to take the next steps (perhaps a possible free2play model) for when the next low-water performance indicator is reached (perhaps a sort of a free2play model?) - will be interesting to see what it is when we get there.

Moving more and more things to the cash shop (with different pricing points) gives them flexibility they need at the moment and it's a solid (and quite expected) business move - a bit surprised it took them this long - losing profits on static subs can't have been easy for them.

Gamewise.. I'm not so sure - but as long as it's not pure play2win shop and they don't implement too many reminder pop-ups while I'm running a raid, I'm resonably OK with it

That's exactly what a subscription is for, Blizzard rakes in enough dough already this is the type of business practice i'd expect from a F2P / B2P game like GW2.

Originally Posted by Potboza

I created a black human male called "Pedopriest" and ran him to SW.
I started asking where the schools were.
Someone said "My kids play on this server you creep! How can you live with yourself?"
I whispered back, "How old are they?"
Yeah.

They need to be able to monetize the game in some way in order to survive and keep development going, we've been paying the same static subscription price for almost 10 years now.
With yearly inflation somewhere around 2.5-3% that $15 bucks 10 years ago was worth quite a bit more than it is today, so I'd guess they're under a lot of pressure to actually find working business model.

One would think that earning roughly $114 million per month from sub fees alone would be considered a "working business model".

My opinion is they want to lose more subs. I think this is the point of their works nowadays.
In 2013 my whole guild (29 active players) stop paying for this game. These small things "bit by bit" are destroying the player base of the WoW...

WTF is that birdcrap "They need to be able to monetize the game in some way in order to survive and keep development going" Did you see the top 10 income/year games list? who is the first as always? So if they get more money than other MMOs what start from nothing and make awesome things... the Blizzard devs can not do anything useful for players after Cataclysm. WoW is not about entertainment nowadays. IT IS JUST A BIG FISH what eat our money for more profit (for more yachts....)

More BS, ppl are happy to get payed the same they were back in 2007 becuase of the economic crisis, nevertheless all the name changes/server xfers etc give them plenty of profit aswell not to mention the already established mount and pet shop

That's not really my experience, salaries have gone up significantly since 2007 as has cost of living - but I do have to say I don't work in the videogame industry, so perhaps it's different there.

Blizzard has cut some staff (mainly CS) and automated processes, I'd guess that would have been part of trying to become more cost efficient.

The server/faction/race/name transfers has most likely been quite a moneymaker so far - but as they're moving to Virtual Realms soon, I'd guess some of that profit would fall off - hence the need to put up more stuff in the cash shop.

WTF is that birdcrap "They need to be able to monetize the game in some way in order to survive and keep development going" Did you see the top 10 income/year games list? who is the first as always? So if they get more money than other MMOs what start from nothing and make awesome things... the Blizzard devs can not do anything useful for players after Cataclysm. WoW is not about entertainment nowadays. IT IS JUST A BIG FISH what eat our money for more profit (for more yachts....)

Of course, but that's the nature of companies and shareholders - they should always make more profit. Failing to do so usually sparks layoffs and other nasty things (and sometimes just making less than expected profit - not losses - can do that.. which is just crazy).

I can agree it being bullshit and it would be nicer to change of our quarter-based economic panic to a more sustainable model, but I don't really see that happening any time soon. Andin the meantime, the people who run Activision-Blizzard must make sure the next quarter meets the shareholder expectations.

the people who run Activision-Blizzard must make sure the next quarter meets the shareholder expectations.
So they need extra revenue sources...

I can say now the next quarter will be really bad...

They lose subs as a result of they try to get more money becuase they lose subs!Stop the flow!

Not the players are the problem... The owners are too high! I would like to erase all of the managers who just wasting money to get more useless properties.
Of cousre the game is old, BUT
Like in other games: crap graphic with good story = win, crap graphic with useless, pointless story = crap, good graphic with useless, pointless story = what a waste of time.

Let's give Blizz the XboxOne treatment sirs, cancel your subs for August as protest and enjoy the sun.

That would kinda suck if they get Siege of Org out in August though :-P

For the record - not surprised about the cash shop, I think it's rather natural move, doesn't affect my gameplay and in the end I think I trust Blizzard to do it with quality and without trying to peddle p2w things on markets that don't want/like them.

So I trust them - until the day they prove me wrong and sell something else than just cosmetic pixels to me.
And definitely not going to cancel my account over this, that would be rather silly.

(there are other things... like upgradeable valor items with same ilvl as 10-Normal rewards that make me want to quit more than a stupid pixel shop)

I see it like this. You pay for a subscription for a theme park. You can excess everything in the park. BUT when you are hungry, food is for your own expense (transfers/faction change). And now they are expending on their gift shop. I don't mind.